3 ms·
Their real crime is trying to cream off the healthy patients onto their service. GP services get paid a flat fee per patient regardless of how much attention t
by caoilte 6y ago
Their real crime is trying to cream off the healthy patients onto their service.
GP services get paid a flat fee per patient regardless of how much attention that patient needs. Babylon is trying to attract healthy tech savvy patients from across London and is leaving the more challenging patients to local GPs who will now be cash strapped.
- shawabawa3 6y agoImo this is uncharitable to Babylon They are trying to attract patients to their service of course, that's their business. The NHS hasn't properly recalibrated costs per patients and so it happens that the type of patients Babylon gets (young, tech savvy) are higher margin patients It's not true that gps get a flat fee, the fees are scaled depending on patient age and other factors, but still aren't in line with costs
- toomuchtodo 6y agoIt's reasonable to be uncharitable to private orgs that threaten public goods for profit. The NHS needing to improve efficiencies and fix systemic failings is one thing, allowing a private org to privatize profits (skimming high margin patients) while socializing the losses (dumping patients requiring more care on the NHS) is quite another. Disclaimer: American, familiar with broken, dysfunctional healthcare. Protect what you have. The alternative is not so good.
- caoilte 6y agoI didn't know it was scaled. That's better than nothing. Thanks for clarification.
- DanBC 6y agoWhen Babylon started they had explicit exclusions for certain types of patients: pregnant women, people with severe and enduring mental illness, and a few others. They had to drop those because that's not how general practice works in England. But it's reasonable for people to remember this and to hold Babylon to account for it.